The Time You Chose Me
by Dream Theme
Summary: I love you in every timeline, but you only love me back in one.
1. Chapter 1

I love you in every timeline. I know this because there is no way that I couldn't love you. Your kindness, your courage, your determination… there is no way that any version of me couldn't love that.

In this timeline, you don't love me. That's okay though. You are, at the very least, happy with him. It's painful knowing that you laugh with him, cry with him… that you share your world with him and not me. But honestly, you couldn't have picked a better guy. You wouldn't be happy with me after all. Just knowing me put you in danger.

But still, I can't help but wonder about the timeline that you picked me. Did I manage to keep you safe? Are we happy? Maybe we own a cat! Or three! Hahah that would be pretty great, wouldn't it? I think I would be happy with that. Three cats and you.

Sometimes I dream of the me that can see your smiling face everyday. That version of me is better and stronger for having your love. I can take on anything the world throws at me, knowing, without a doubt, that you are there to support me. You take down my walls and erase all my doubts and when you reach out, I wake up with my hand twitching to take yours.

And for a moment, I almost don't remember that you chose him. I almost hear you breathing, asleep beside me. I almost don't feel my heart break.

I remind myself that you are happy. And although it hurts, I am glad that in this timeline at least, I got to know you and love you.

Because I know that in some timelines, I probably didn't get to know you at all.


	2. Falling Stars

**Hey guys! Happy holidays! Enjoy this very quickly written chapter as a token of my holiday spirit. :3**

She was sat on the floor when he entered, back to the door, humming a tune he almost recognised and hands busy with something he couldn't quite see.

"What are you doing?" he asked, amusement lacing his voice. The words startled her and before he could move, she had shot up and dragged the blanket from the sofa onto whatever it was she working on.

"Nothing," her voice was too high, eyes too wide, "work!" He grinned at her and she slumped in defeat. She had never been very good at telling lies. "It's a surprise. You'll find out later." He didn't press her for more. He didn't need to. Whatever it was she was doing, he trusted her to explain when she needed to. And anyway, surprises were always best when they were actually surprises. So he shrugged off his jacket and wandered to the kitchen.

"I'm starved. You got any food?" He stayed there while she packed away her surprise project and smiled when she opened the fridge and pulled out a can of PhD Pepper for him and one for herself.

"Probably, but you'll have to make it yourself. What are you doing here anyway?" She pulled herself onto the worktop, sitting to face him. "And why didn't you knock?!"

"I need a reason to visit the RFA's favourite princess?"

"What about Jaehee?"

He laughed, imagining Jaehee wearing a long princess gown with a crown atop her poised head. "You're right. Then… I need a reason to visit the RFA's second favourite princess?" He laughed even harder at the mock outrage on her face.

"You're terrible!" She harrumphed and turned her face away, nose in the air. He opened his drink and sipped at the froth that disappeared almost immediately.

"You know you love me." He told her. She glanced at him and the light in her eyes twinkled with amusement.

"Yeah," she sighed, as though it were the most depressing thought, "I do." Then she laughed as she flicked an errant crumb at him.

"Merry Christmas!" Her laugh was loud and happy and it made her shine.

"Happy Christmas!" He opened his arms for a hug and she smiled widely, wrapping her own arms around him. "Do you think the others are inside?"

She pulled away and he sighed at the sudden lack of contact. She picked up the bags she had dropped to greet him and turned to the building. "I know Jumin is. He messaged me a couple of minutes ago with the table number," she sent her smile his way again and he grinned back, "shall we go in then?"

The stars danced above them as he he offered out his arm for her to take. She laughed once again, taking it, before they both headed into the restaurant together.

The atmosphere was pleasant and all of them were laughing - even Jumin, cheeks reddened by wine, was surprising himself with his loud and frequent giggles. He never would've believed it if he hadn't seen it himself. The always composed C&R Director Jumin Han….. giggling. The members of the RFA were all doing their best to amuse him now, seeing who could make him giggle the most. Surprisingly, Jaehee was winning. Her eyes sparkled behind her glasses and her smirk grew wider with each new joke and innuendo that passed her lips.

He knew that for as long as he lived, this moment would be forever burned on to his memory. This moment where they were all happy and together and enjoying life. It was perfect, he thought, and it would last forever. Never forgotten, never tainted, always cherished. So he took out his phone, stretched out his arm as far as it would go and snapped a picture of the 6 of them, grinning and laughing and full of life. And when the presents came out, he took another, excitement electrifying the air around them.

Jaehee opened the first present. It was from Jumin and when the impeccable wrapping was ripped away, they were all surprised to see he had put some thought into it. A selection of coffee flavours that were probably each as expensive as the pricey branded tea set that came with them. Jaehee gaped in shock at the array of flavours offered to her before coming back to her senses and thanking the corporate heir. He smiled, lifted the half empty glass of wine to his lips and nodded, seemingly pleased with her reaction. Zen opened his gift from Jumin next and everyone laughed when he shrieked at the framed photo of Elizabeth the 3rd rolling on her back. Jumin, too, giggled again and pulled out another gift, quickly exchanging it for the framed photo. This time, Zen was the one to sit in shock when he saw the no doubt expensive, but thoughtful present.

The evening carried on like this, each opening their gifts one at a time, until finally they each only had one gift left. Hers. She fidgeted in her seat in nervous anticipation, eyes shining with hopeful expectation.

"I think you should all open them at the same time. That way it won't ruin the surprise for everyone else." She shifted again, almost bouncing as they complied. As he tore carefully at the awkwardly wrapped paper, he didn't know what to expect. He found himself as excited as she seemed to be, wanting to see what her sparkling soul could have created for them. As the paper fell away, his eyes widened and the air left his lungs. Hundreds of meticulously folded paper stars filled a jar, all of them different shades of the same colour. In the dim light of the restaurant, he could see that some of them glowed, shining through the glass of the jar. A note taped to the inside of the glass obscured some of them, but it didn't diminish their beauty.

Glancing around, he saw everyone else held a similar jar, all of them filled to the brim with stars. When he looked at her, he saw that her smile was gentle and open and honest, just like everything else about her. He looked down again at the jar and read the note taped to the inside;

 **Jar of Stars - a star for every thought of you**

And then his name underneath, all hand-written in beautiful calligraphy.

"How long have you been doing this?" He asked. She turned slightly to face him, face glowing as noticeably as the stars in his jar.

"I got the idea last month," she replied, coughing slightly with embarrassment. Zen looked up at her, sharply.

"You made all of these in a month?!"

"I think of you guys a lot," was all she had to say. Her words were so simple, yet they held so much in them. When he looked back at the stars, he fancied he could see her love in them and it took every inch of his will to not let tears fall.

Conversation picked up easily again as they teased her for her sentimentality and she responded in kind. They stayed there for hours, all getting slowly more and more inebriated as the drinks kept flowing, and jokes kept coming, and by the end of the night his thoughts were pleasantly fuzzy. He remembered less of what was said, and more of what he was feeling and none of it was negative.

He did remember snippets though. They left only when they had to - the restaurant staff practically kicked them out - and they left with great reluctance. He remembered giggling as they all clambered into the back of Jumin's limo, Driver Kim watching with exasperation from the front. He remembered them all piling into Zen's tiny basement apartment. Jaehee dancing around the kitchen when she won whatever board game they were playing. Her eyes, gleaming and full of life as he took her hand and dragged her to join Jaehee dancing. Laughter, singing, joy, a joke about an angel, Zen half laid on the worktop, whining after his stolen cigarettes.

And then the drive home. Driver Kim stayed silent as they went and slowly 5 dwindled to 3. He remembered this one moment clearest of all. All of his gifts were in a bag that hung loosely from his fingertips. He reached out to hug Jumin, who was too far gone to resist, and Jaehee, who returned it with a smile. When he reached for a hug from her, she pulled him close and hugged him tightly and he thought of the stars she had so lovingly made for him - for all of them. He remembered that she smelled of mulled wine and the smell made him dizzy. They pulled apart and with courage born of alcohol and happiness, he kissed her cheek. Then he left the warmth of the car, pulling his gifts with him into the icy cold night. The streetlights barely made any difference in the fog that had pulled in and he could see nothing of the sky and what it should have held. But he could see her, waving at him through the window with Jumin and Jaehee by her side, and he could see laughter twinkling in her eyes. He remembered waving back at her.

And he remembered realising that he was quite possibly in love with the girl that had, somehow, taken the stars and given them to him.

His voice broke as he left yet another voicemail asking her to please, _please_ call him back. He knew the others were all doing the same, frantic, hoping, praying that she would at least message them. The TV showed him pictures of the half destroyed shopping centre, of people numb with shock and screaming with pain. He could see smears of red in the grainy footage and bile rose in his throat. He couldn't breathe, his vision swam, and suddenly he was on all fours, retching onto the floor. Above him, on the wall, a newscaster droned on, tolling the approximate death count, guessing the number of injured, and he threw up what little was left of his breakfast.

He sat back on his knees and wrapped his arms around his stomach. There was not enough air getting to his lungs and he knew he was panicking, but he couldn't remember any of the techniques he used before. But before was nothing like this and this was excruciating. Tears fell from his eyes into the spreading pool of vomit and his breaths were coming too quickly, too sharp and everything - everything - hurt.

The phone rang suddenly from where he had dropped it and he wasted no time in picking it up.

"Hello?!" His voice was raw and scratchy and he winced, hoping that it didn't sound that way through the phone.

"Did you hear back from her yet?" He needn't have worried. Seven's voice was as bad as his own. He choked back another sob and shook his head, forgetting for a moment that Seven couldn't see him.

"No. Nope. God, she's okay right? Seven, she'll be okay? She wasn't there. She went somewhere else to shop. She couldn't have been there. I can't -" he gasped in a half lungful of air "- Seven I can't -" he dissolved into a mess of tears and heaving lungs.

On the other end of the phone, he could vaguely hear Seven's sobs, muffled as though he was covering his mouth or holding the phone far away from him. "Seven," he finally managed to say, "Seven, she can't be gone. Not like this. I can't -" sob "- I can't lose her."

When Seven replied, his voice shook and he had to start over several times. "I know. I know. I… I'll do everything I can. I'll find her, Yoosung."

They found her in the end.

They found her, but it had been too late. The others had refused to let Yoosung see her. They told him that he didn't want to, that he should remember her as she had been. But he was stubborn.

After, he wished he wasn't, but he didn't want it to be another situation like Rika's. Didn't want to be left wondering whether it was the truth. He saw her and he felt the last of his hope crushed under a heavy weight of despair. There were no tears left, nothing to wash away the depression that turned the world grey. So instead, he drank. He drank to forget, but he didn't forget. Then he drank to drown his sorrows, but they persisted. He carried on drinking anyway.

The funeral left him feeling empty, but he stayed until the only ones left were her parents and the RFA. One of her mothers approached the 5 of them sometime during the wake, greeted them with a smile that didn't reach her eyes.

"It's so nice to finally meet you guys. Though I thought the circumstances would be different" Jumin stepped forward, took her hand in his in the most gentle manner he could. "I am so sorry for your loss. If you ever need anything, do not hesitate to ask," his hands trembled in hers as he tried to express and also repress the grief that almost debilitated him, "she meant so much to each of us and we'd like to help any way we can."

"Thank you. You're Jumin, yes?" She looked around at each of them, something like recognition twinkling in her eyes. "You're all exactly as she described you. The way she spoke of you, you'd think you'd all saved her life." A sob forced its way out of her mouth and suddenly she was hunched over herself, looking for all the world like she was trying to keep her body from falling apart. Jumin released her hand and she used it to cover her face, hiding away from the world that had been cruel enough to take her daughter away.

They stood awkwardly, not knowing what to do, as she cried. Zen made the first move, stepping forward to wrap his arms around the broken woman. He held her and let his own tears fall. None of them knew how to act in this situation. They had all been to funerals before, but it never got easier to navigate through the mess of emotions. They were like that for a while, letting the woman grieve, taking the time to grieve themselves. Yoosung couldn't bear to watch her and looked away, but in doing so found himself staring at a framed picture of her, surrounded by incense and flowers that already begun to wilt. It was a picture of her just graduating high school, happy and smiling and looking forward to her future. He thanked his lucky stars he was so drained, or he would have cried again.

"It's not fair," she sobbed, "it's not fair."

Yoosung agreed.

Jaehee's picture lit up his phone screen, ringtone incessantly calling for him. He didn't know how long he'd been sat there, leant against the wall, eyes closed, legs pulled into his chest and a glass of whiskey stolen from Zen cradled in his hand. Reaching for the phone with one hand, he cleared his throat with a mouthful of the burning alcohol.

"Hello?" He flinched at how empty his voice was.

"Yoosung," she was crying again. All they ever seemed to do these days was cry, "look at the stars."

"The stars." He didn't understand. It was the middle of the day and the sun was shining too brightly for him to even open his curtains. "Jaehee, what are you talking about?"

"She - You should unravel the stars." Her voice broke at the end of the sentence and she hung up before he could ask her anything else. He sighed and let his hand fall, dropping the phone back to the floor. He needed more whiskey.

The world fell away from him when he saw them, half covered by his dirty laundry and forgotten on the floor. He felt sick that he hadn't put them somewhere where he could see them everyday. The glow had gone from the stars, never having enough light to absorb and reflect in the dark, but a few hours released from underneath the dirty shirt should fix that. He picked up the jar tenderly, with a reverence that surprised even him. In the back of his mind, he remembered Jaehee's phonecall a few days before. ' _Unravel the stars_ '.

With shaking hands, he opened the jar and picked one out. The green paper felt thin and fragile in his hand, a single squeeze would be the only thing needed to crush it. But he didn't. He instead flattened it out, carefully, frightened of what he would find. The end poked out of the fold it was tucked under and he gripped it, pulled it out and slowly unraveled it. Words were revealed as he did so and he found that he couldn't swallow round the lump in his throat. There was a knot at the end, keeping the hexagon shape needed for the base of the stars and he untied it, revealing the beginning of the message meant for him.

He couldn't help the sob that escaped him, somehow fighting through the lump that blocked his throat and he desperately grabbed for another, opening it out quicker than the first one. Tears fell freely to the ground beneath him as he opened up another and another and another. Reading all of them, following the flow of her handwriting as she told him in so many different ways how she loved him. It was almost more than he could bear and he had to stop after every few stars to catch his breath and pour himself another drink.

He had to stop when he had gotten halfway down the jar, bits of paper surrounding him in piles of love. His vision was too blurred for him to read any more and he had ran out of the whiskey. She was here, with him, on these strips of paper. This he would treasure for all his life. There would be nothing or no-one that could take this from him and he would hold onto it.

She was gone, but she still loved him and he had the evidence in the stars.

 **Yoosung, I hope you are well today.**

 **You didn't know, but you really helped cheer me up today**

 **Thank you for being so welcoming when I first joined RFA**

 **I miss you. We should meet up sometime soon**

 **You are so adorably cute I want to keep you. 3**

 **You're one of my best friends and there's nothing I wouldn't trust you with.**

 **Yoosung, you shine so brightly. Don't let anything dull your light xoxo**

 **Stay your cheerful happy self forever. It helps more than you know.**

 **Don't ever leave me. Please. xx**

 **You don't know this, but without you I don't think I'd be around today**

 **That was a dumb joke, Yoosung, but it made me laugh lololol**

 **Yoosung, my falling star, you and the others are my wish come true. Thank you 3**

 **I am so sorry but please. it had a somewhat bittersweet ending lololol**


End file.
